Interest and card data reporting begins in stages from April 2028
SI 2026/1152 fixes the reporting population and deadlines, but leaves submission and verification requirements to future HMRC notices.
1Summary
The Data-gathering (Ongoing Data: Interest and Payment Card Transactions) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/1152) come into force on 01 March 2028, but the operative reporting obligations commence in stages: merchant-acquirer returns for April 2028, quarterly interest returns for the period ending 05 July 2028, and annual interest returns for tax year 2028-29. The Treasury has settled the reporting duty, its population and the reporting cycle. It has not settled the technical specification. Regulations 5 and 6 require data to be provided, and verified, in the form and manner later specified by HMRC in published notices. The instrument uses that approach. Compliance teams therefore have fixed legal deadlines but not a finished operating specification. The instrument does not identify amendments or revocations to existing legislation.
2What changes
- Relevant financial institutions, including qualifying electronic lending-system operators, must provide HMRC with annual data on interest other than current- and savings-account interest. The first annual return is for tax year 2028-29 and is due no later than 21 days after the end of that tax year.
- The same institutions must provide quarterly data on interest paid or credited on current and savings accounts. The first reporting period ends on 05 July 2028. Each return is due no later than 21 days after the relevant quarterly data period ends.
- Relevant merchant acquirers must provide monthly data for each retailer with a United Kingdom address to whom they were contractually obliged to make card-settlement payments in that month. The first reporting month is April 2028. Regulation 13 contains no turnover-based de minimis threshold.
- A person entering scope later starts with the tax year, quarter or month in which it begins the relevant activity. A person leaving scope must notify HMRC, await HMRC confirmation of the cessation date, and provide outstanding annual, quarterly and monthly data within 21 days of that date.
- Regulations 5 and 6 reserve the submission format, transmission method and verification steps to HMRC published notices. Regulation 15 applies the same approach to reasonable efforts to obtain specified identifying information that is not otherwise within a reporter’s possession or power.
- Relevant persons must retain the reported data and records of verification steps for five years. They must also notify HMRC before their first reporting obligation, in a form and manner to be specified by HMRC notice.
- The regulations identify the Finance Act 2026 and Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011 as part of the statutory framework. The regulations themselves do not set a correction process for retailers or account holders whose data are wrong.
3Who is affected
The reporting obligations bind relevant financial institutions and relevant merchant acquirers; HMRC receives the data under the regulations. Retailers and account holders are not generally the reporting party, but their interest and card-settlement data are within the collection. Small United Kingdom-addressed retailers are in scope where their acquirer has the contractual obligation described in regulation 13, irrespective of any threshold in the regulations.
HMRC receives structured and recurring data for matching against tax records. Reporters bear the systems, data-quality and record-keeping costs, while the eventual burden will depend materially on notices not yet published. The legislation allows HMRC to determine operational detail by notice, but the statutory instrument does not state how the resulting data will be retained, shared, secured or deleted. It also does not establish that card-settlement data alone represent taxable turnover or profit; that remains a matter for reconciliation in individual compliance activity.
4Key dates
- 02 November 2026: The Treasury made SI 2026/1152.
- 03 November 2026: SI 2026/1152 was laid before the House of Commons.
- 01 March 2028: The Regulations come into force.
- Before 01 April 2028: Relevant merchant acquirers must notify HMRC before their first monthly reporting month.
- April 2028: The first merchant-acquirer reporting month begins.
- 21 May 2028: The first monthly merchant-acquirer return is due, subject to the statutory 21-day deadline.
- 05 July 2028: The first quarterly interest reporting period ends.
- 26 July 2028: The first quarterly interest return is due, subject to the statutory 21-day deadline.
- 2028-29: The first annual interest reporting tax year begins.
- 26 April 2029: The first annual interest return is due, subject to the statutory 21-day deadline.